The truce achieved in recent years between restoration of Barcelona and the town hall It has been dynamited in just a few days after the municipal measures announced against noise in the Eixample and Ciutat Vella. “They criminalize restaurants and terraces instead of addressing incivility and frozen bottles at dawn,” the director of the Restoration Guild, Roger Pallarols, who has announced a judicial war “unprecedented” in the city. “Mayor Colau has unilaterally decided to destroy peace, she has broken agreements on schedules that cost a lot to build,” she fired.
For the leader of the local bosses, it is a “harassment and attack against restoration never seen before“. An offensive that comes after two terms of ups and downs in the relationship between one of the most dynamic economic sectors of the city and the council. The first term of the Comuns began with continuous clashes over the terrace ordinance, until it was softened with the support of the majority of the political groups, until signing a schedule agreement in 2018. Later, the pandemic favored a rapprochement when the Colau government and its socialist partners promoted the so-called covid terraces, which consisted of extensions or new licenses and which were going to be consolidated in many cases, especially if they were on the road.
In a short time, this fragile balance has been broken, as it transpired that the majority of requests to maintain these nightstands are being denied in districts such as Ciutat Vella. And the straw that has broken the camel’s back in the sector has been the consecutive announcements of anti-noise measures that, among others, point directly to the terraces of different streets considered stressed where they will cut the schedules an hour (until 11:00 p.m.) and also the restaurants will have to lower the blind one hour before (2:00 a.m.).
Full rights of those affected
Pallarols explains to this newspaper that “the schedules are the most restrictive in Catalonia and Spain”, and the announced cut “will have a forceful political response and to match”, in addition to opening the door to a massive judicialization. The council, he maintains, has “provoked a crisis and opened a war against restaurants and against the majority of Barcelonans”, who are regular users of the terraceo. He accuses him of pursuing regulated activity, but not acting against incivility and alcohol consumption on the street, which are unrelated to that , adduces.
Another aspect that worries those affected a lot is that the offensive took place in the month of August: “It is very serious, it causes a defenseless situation“. The employer has asked the Col·legi de l’Advocacia de Barcelona (ICAV) to urge the municipal government not to make notifications in this usual month of summer exodus “so as not to vitiate these nullity processes due to obvious defenselessness that occurs by not being able to access lawyers and qualified technicians during the holidays.
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In this sense, the school has issued this afternoon a release where it states that although the notifications of the public administrations in August are legitimate and legal, in practice they imply that “the recipient cannot exercise his right of defense in full faculties”. For this reason, some use the so-called ‘days of grace’ to extend deadlines. The ICAV considers these tools “desirable” in legal terms, with criteria of “rationality and proportionality”.
As an observer of the decisions of the administrations, he suggests to the consistory the mechanisms mentioned and that would allow those affected “the right to their full defense” in September, and not now.